Does this sound familiar America?

Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State

On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defense against Communist state-endangering acts of violence:

§ 1. Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [ habeas corpus ], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

It’s the Reichstag Fire Decree, which was thrown together by Göring the day after the… uh… ‘convenient’ fire at the Reichstag on February 27 1933. Less than a month later the Enabling Act was passed by parliament, giving the Nazis dictatorial powers over Germany.

The new Democrat congress looks likely to ignore the Bush administration’s attempt to legalise it’s formerly secret – and very illegal – warrantless wiretapping regime, but there’s a lot of pretty nasty stuff left to undo yet.

I just hope the Democrats don’t screw up this next two years. They’re very much the other side of the Republican coin, I don’t have a whole lot of faith in them. America is a long way off the country I wanted so much to visit only a few years ago.

South Korea hits 100Mbps

arstechnica: Those stuck with slow broadband connections have another reason to look across the Pacific with envy. Some South Korean cable Internet subscribers are now able to get 100Mbps connections thanks to deployment of pre-DOCSIS 3.0 hardware by cable operator ARRIS.

Skanger me Banger

Can’t embed this one – effing bebo, look at the comments if you want a level of intelligence on the site – but it’s well worth a visit. Very funny.

Flying Spaghetti Monster in Germany!

All hail the all-powerful FSM!

Firefox 2 inline spellcheck

Firefox evangelists and automatic spellchecks are actually pretty high up on my list of pet hates, but I know that some people like both, and this was something I Did Not Know, and had to fiddle with to get working. See my post #25 on page 2 if you find yourself scratching your head too.

Is an “air shower” like an “air guitar”?

I think this is a great idea in a time when we should all be learning to be more conservative with natural resources. I do find myself wondering where the air is coming from though. What happens if you fart in the shower? Heh.

End of the road for traffic lights?

Telegraph.co.uk: Most traffic lights should be torn up as they make roads less safe, one of Europe’s leading road engineers said yesterday.

Hans Monderman, a traffic planner involved in a Brussels-backed project known as Shared Space, said that taking lights away helped motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to co-exist more happily and safely.

Residents of the northern Dutch town of Drachten have already been used as guinea-pigs in an experiment which has seen nearly all the traffic lights stripped from their streets.

Only three of the 15 sets in the town of 50,000 remain and they will be gone within a couple of years.

In Search of the Pope’s Children

This RTE show, presented by David McWilliams, is incredibly well put together; I’d highly recommend watching it next week.

The only thing I’d fundamentally disagree with is McWilliams’ suggestion that nuclear power might be ok for Ireland, when of course it’s not ok for anywhere.

Waste David, waste, waste, waste. When you come up with a solution to the waste problem, feel free to try again.

Google’s New Frontier: Print Ads

They really do have some very clever people working for them. Can we do something like this in Ireland, and finally get some IrelandOffline ads in the mainstream media?

BusinessWeek: Google (GOOG) is rolling out its most ambitious print advertising initiative yet, an online marketplace that will let advertisers place bids on space in more than 50 major newspapers across the U.S.

Ransom Love on SCO/Caldera/Linux/etc

Groklaw: Not only does he testify that all of the allegedly infringing material was in Caldera Linux, that Caldera knew it was in there, that it wanted it in there in some cases, and that the company knowingly distributed the files in its Linux products and from its websites, including the LiS Streams module, he explains very clearly to the court that even after Caldera acquired Santa Cruz’s UNIX assets, Caldera remained, while he was CEO, “always first and foremost a Linux company dedicated to the promotion and development of Linux.”